Mary Harron
Ho sparato a Andy Warhol

THE REVIEW

Plot: Valerie Solanas, a lesbian feminist, writes a manual titled SCUM, literally Society for Cutting Up Men, enters the artistic circle of Andy Warhol, tries to have one of her plays produced without success, becomes convinced that both Warhol and the publisher who wants to publish SCUM are plotting against her, and decides to shoot and kill Warhol. She won't succeed in killing him but will wound him seriously, and she is then arrested for attempted murder. The film is fast, essential, and effectively highlights the characters, who are the faces that animate Warhol's films and Lou Reed's New York songs: namely Candy Darling, Solanas herself, the Velvet Underground. But the soul of the film is Lili Taylor, who portrays the neurotic Valerie. Taylor offers the audience not just an interpretation but a possible incarnation of Solanas that exists independently of the cinematic representation. Her close-ups show an emotionally unstable and exalted state of mind, just as her tense movements highlight the paranoid state the young woman is in. The naturalness and spontaneity with which Taylor portrays this exalted woman almost make you forget the criminal act she committed. In 1996 at the Sundance Film Festival, she was given a Special Recognition, a clear indication that her performance was extraordinary; for this work, she also won the Seattle International Film Festival as the best actress as well as at the Stockholm International Film Festival, and she was nominated as the best actress by both the Chicago Film Critics Association Award and the National Society of Film Critics Award.